2/13/2008 @ 6:00AM

Eight Trends For A Mobile World

Ask Christian Lindholm to peer into the future of the mobile industry, and he’ll dish out opinionated takes on topics ranging from beautiful phones to broken business models.

A 10-year veteran of
Nokia
, Lindholm has done stints with its famed user interface group. He also directed
Yahoo!
‘s mobile group from 2005 to 2007. These days, Lindholm heads London-based design consultancy Fjord.

At Fjord, Lindholm specializes in media projects that span the “three screens”–the TV, the PC and the cell phone. That includes projects for the BBC, Orange, a unit of
France Telecom
, and
Vodafone
, as well as for former employers Nokia and Yahoo!, where he is helping revamp Yahoo!’s Go mobile portal. His broad goal, Lindholm says, is just this: “simplifying digital complexity.”

Pretty graphics and fun transitions are now basic requirements to compete. This started a couple years ago with
Sony
Ericsson
upgrading its user interface. Then the iPhone upped the ante.

There’s a new design discipline emerging called “motion design.” It’s about creating seamless and beautiful journeys, not just functional, individual screens. The skill set comes from guys who have been doing special effects for TV and video. The platform is evolving from bitmap graphics to vector-based graphics, which can scale in degrees. That changes the whole way you design.

Sony Ericsson, Samsung and LG understand the benefit of beauty. I would expect to see a lot more beautiful stuff in 2008 than we’ve been used to seeing.

Trend No. 2: ‘Chained Islands’ Are The New Walled Gardens

All the major operators are proclaiming openness and stepping up their services. I think a multi-platform, single sign-in experience will emerge. This will simplify mobile services, because content will move fluidly between devices, but the openness will be moderated. The “landlord” of the island will control the user interface and potential partners.

To monetize these applications, there will be signed terms of service, such as lock-in by DRM or through metadata like song ratings, photo ratings, or photo clusters. Apple’s
iTunes and iPhoto are benchmarks of this model. Nokia and its new Internet services portal Ovi is an example of emerging “chained islands.”

Trend No. 3: The Mobile Net Becomes Useful

There are already large volumes of 3G phones with good browsers and screens measuring two inches or larger. We expect there will be 50 million such phones in use by the end of 2008. Combine that with the unprecedented effect the iPod touch and iPhone have had on content companies, inspiring them to make mobile optimized sites. It’s now possible to build really interesting mobile browser-based services. We believe there will be a spike in usage of the mobile Net in 2008.

Some of the most popular mobile sites, like
Google
, and Yahoo! and the BBC, seem to be overhauling their solutions. There are also lots of startups that have realized that building and distributing an application is too hard, and they’re switching to browser-based solutions.

Trend No. 4: GPS Is The New Camera

Integrating a camera into mobile phones has proved an extremely successful idea. Now GPS is poised to be the next killer mobile app. Chip prices are rapidly dropping, and providers are dreaming big of monetizing location-based services. Maps are being fused with navigation. We expect more than half of phones will have GPS chips five years from now.

Google, Yahoo! and
Microsoft
are all betting big on local services. Nokia seems quite positive about them, too. Its investment in
Navteq
last year is seen as kind of a tipping point. Yellow Pages information is a big, big service among the incumbents, so there will be an interesting battle in leveraging maps and building value-added search services on top of that.

Trend No. 5: 2008 Will Be The Year Of Bad Touch Screens

The industry has reacted to the iPhone much faster than it reacted to the BlackBerry. That indicates there’s a strong belief in the concept of a touch screen phone. Apple has a huge advantage with its multi-touch technology, optimized software and good sensors. Touch screens are ridiculously hard to do well, because they pose both hardware and software problems, and these typically aren’t detected until late in development.

Companies are launching touch screens hastily and hoping for the best. We’re seeing phones that just started shipping that don’t quickly respond to touch. As a user, you somehow think they’re broken.

The first proper benchmark is whether Nokia will announce a Series 60 touch device in Barcelona. Touching that will give an indication of the “state of the union” for touch screens

Trend No. 6: Google Slows Down To Telecom Time

Internet time is maybe three times as fast as a normal year. Telecom time is maybe half the speed of a normal year. A telecom year is slower because operators enjoy fantastic profit margins just by providing a few new mobiles and getting people to sign up for 12- to 18-month contracts. There’s no big reason to challenge the status quo, and no real force that can challenge it either. Telecom time will be a constant for some time to come.

Google has been an iconic darling of the Internet industry. The media expects them to perform at Internet time, but entering the mobile industry will grind Google down to telecom time. We suspect they will not progress much in mobile in 2008, because operators are quite skeptical about Android.

The way Google operates, it’s very much startups and small teams. If you have five, six or 10 teams asking different questions about the business, technical specifications and due diligence, it becomes too much to handle. Microsoft, which many consider the greatest software company ever, has taken almost 10 years to get any kind of traction in the mobile space. We estimate Google has invested more than $150 million in mobile, but radically outperforming Microsoft will still be hard.

The media compares Google to Apple as a new entrant, but that’s really apples to oranges. Google doesn’t have nearly the same types of assets. Apple is the master of marketing, of hardware/software integration, and the world’s best retailer per square foot. No one’s done a good job at courting developers for mobile, but I think the iPhone SDK will be a huge hit.

Trend No. 7: Dawn Of The Casual Computer

We now have compact devices with 12-inch screens. But if you go smaller than nine inches, you enter a void where no one has been successful.

A casual computer is somewhat different: It’s smaller, with you all the time, and is unobtrusive enough that it can casually glide in and out of your everyday life. Taking a laptop out of your backpack in a restaurant is quite rude socially, whereas it’s not with an iPhone or iPod touch. Suddenly you have a new computing paradigm: an entertainment-driven, multipurpose device that provides a great Internet experience and is pocketable.

Compare that to the Eee PC, a low-end laptop that also costs around $300. If you’re a kid and have $300, you’re probably going to buy the iPod Touch, because it’s fun, cooler and has more show-off value. Metaphorically speaking, the Eee is porridge and the iPod Touch is ice cream.

Microsoft could be the loser here, because its whole brand is about utility, not entertainment. But it could bring out a pocket-sized Xbox and change the game.

Trend No. 8: Go Down Or Go Out

The mobile business is all about the low end, where volume is huge and still growing. The low end will be the primary battlefield in 2008. Nokia dominates this market, but Samsung is saying it wants to sell a $50 phone, and Sony Ericsson has also announced low-end devices. To succeed, you have to do everything differently, understand these consumers and their different needs. It’s absolutely brutal down there.

The big lesson last year was the Moto, a
Motorola
market-entry phone that came across as a poor man’s phone. It had a low-power display to prolong battery life, and looked so different it was off-putting to consumers.

It’s important to remember that mobile devices are aspirational products. Consumers are generally smart. If they have 30 euros to invest, they will try to get the best their money can buy. Even in the low end, you have to do high design.